“We came down to a town called Hagiapate, where there is a great large fountain, where they wash and prepare the ἅγιον χώμα (sacred earth) for the Turkish seal. They first dissolve it in water, well working it with their hands; then let the water pass through a sive, and what remains they throw away. They let the water stand till settled, then take of the clear, and, when dry enough, they mould in their hands; and most of this we have is shaped from thence. It is all here white, yet I had some given me flesh-coloured. I enquired diligently about it, and they all told me it came out of the same pit; but I expect some of these fellows have found some other place which they conceal. We had some little quantity given us of several people, but very privately, for fear of the Avaniás. Agathone, being the Pasha’s favourite, feared nothing, but gave us at least 20 okes before 20 people. They tell a story that the earth is hollow from the holy well, when dig’d, to the fountain, where they wash it; and that a duck once dived in the water there and was taken up here; but it seemed an impossible thing to me, there being not water enough in the first place to cover a duck, and the water in the bogge so very shallow, and the earth not sinuous.”
Dr. Covel’s remarks on the sacred earth of Lemnos are particularly valuable, as this is one of the clearest instances of a pagan superstition being carried on through the influence of Christianity down to our own times. Pliny mentions it (Hist. Nat., 29, 5); also Dioscorides (De Mater. Med., 5, 113); and Galen made an expedition to Lemnos on purpose to see it, and gives us an account of it (De Simpl. Med., 9, 2, vol. xii). He mentions the disorders for which it was considered beneficial; he also gives us the ceremonies and mode of operation; on certain occasions a priestess of Artemis came, and, after certain rites, carried off a cartload to the city; she mixed it with water, kneaded it, and strained off both the moisture and gritty particles, and, when it was like wax, she impressed it with the seal of Artemis. During the Middle Ages, the reputed virtues of this earth remained unimpaired as a remedy for the plague. Belon saw it in the sixteenth century (Observations de plusieurs singulaires, p. 51). Here we have Dr. Covel’s account of it in the seventeenth century. Conze was able to buy specimens of it in 1858; but Dr. Tozer, who visited Lemnos three years ago, writes of it as an expiring superstition. In that year only twelve persons were present at the ceremony; and the Turkish governor, seeing so small a prospect of revenue, has ceased to be present in person. Dr. Tozer could not even obtain a specimen in a chemist’s shop; but the superstitious in remote parts of the island still use it.
Proceeding from Lemnos, the Alloy went to Chios, where Dr. Covel gives us an account of the silk-trade carried on there, and the growth of the mastic, and the avanias thereon imposed by the Turkish Government. “The poor sort of Greek women dayly scold and quarrell, and pull one another’s head gear of,[449] then in a fury run to Turkish justice; and, in conclusion, both pay soundly, though the richest purse always speeds best.”
When passing between Chios and the island of Psara, Dr. Covel tells two curious nautical yarns. “The Plymouth, which caryed my Lord Winchilsea to Stambol, passing between these two islands, strook twice or thrice upon a blind rock, and a great peice broke of, and stuck in the keel of the ship, and continued in quite till she returned to England, and was found when she came to be carin’d. The peice is now kept in the king’s closet. Captain Blake told me that a ship coming from the E. Indyes, the Doctor was very kind to a sick mariner, who thereupon made the Dr. his heir; he, tempted thereby, gave him something to sleep, and, taking opportunity, thrust in a small needle or bodkin under his ear, and kil’d him. He was thrown over board, and three days after, sayling with a very stiff gale, they spyed his body floting under the weather bow; as fast as the ship could make way, it kept pace. With wonder they took it up, and, after many consultations, the Captain came himself first and touch’t it; when the Dr. came, the blood spirt out of the dead man’s nose and the wound under his ear, upon him: he confest all, and was brought home and hang’d.”
After rounding Cape Matapan, the Alloy sailed up the Adriatic to Venice, where Dr. Covel stayed some time and crossed Italy and France on his way to England.
“On Monday morning, Jan. 20th, 1679, we got over to Dover in four houres just; that night to Canterbury; next night to London.”
At the end of his Diary there is this curious note on a London fog:—“Feb. 12, 1679, was Black Sunday; so dark about 9 or 10 o’clock for about ½ an hour, as candles were lighted in most churches in London. It is thought it came partly from a misty thick air, partly from a very black, thick cloud, which, being low, hindered in the third place the smoke to rise high, which increased the thickness of the air. I am informed the like hath been often before. Mr. Standish was lighted home with a torch at 3 in the afternoon.”
